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Dr. alexa yunes-koch
Executive Director, Founder
Dr. Alexa Yunes-Koch is the founder and creator of Mondo Method, and co-owner of parent company Yunes Educational Services. She earned a PhD in Education with an emphasis in behavioral neurobiology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focused on the neuroscience of stress, teacher-student interactions, learning and motivation, trauma, and emotional regulation. Alexa has over 10 years of teaching experience ranging from the PreK-12 context to the collegiate level, and has presented nationally and internationally in Texas, Nebraska, Nevada, Illinois, and New York, as well as Mexico and Scotland.
As a stress and behavior specialist, Alexa has worked with teachers, students, parents, and professionals around the world to provide practical strategies and resources to manage stress and change behavior. Alexa's workshops and strategies are all about transforming environments to be enjoyable within challenging contexts through neuroscience-based strategies that humanize and support all team members.
Alexa has collaborated with the Walt Disney Company to create socioemotional learning activities featuring Mondo Method, and the method is now being used across school districts and organizations to improve and optimize learning, living, and work environments for adults and children alike.
Creating the method
How did Mondo Method come together?
Mondo method is grounded in developmental psychology, educational theories about pedagogy and human learning, and behavioral neurobiology, but it originated in the K-12 classroom.
With over 40 years of PreK-12+ experience combined between the two of us, we developed countless strategies for teaching and learning that centered around creating fun, enjoyable classroom environments that met the highest academic standards. To do so, we focused on building authentic relationships with students, getting to know students and their strengths, interests, and personalities, and bringing those elements into the classrooms as fun and engaging games, music, chants, and other creative activities that maximized trust and learning.
Mondo method emerged from the desire to explain WHY those strategies and ways of teaching and learning were so effective across so many contexts. We found the answers by bringing together work from various disciplines and brilliant neurobiologists like Stephen Porges, Robert Sapolsky, and Jaak Panksepp. Through a deeply interdisciplinary approach to developing our theoretical framework, extensive work in various neuroscience research labs, and continued work with teachers, we were able to create a method of understanding and changing behavior, emotion and cognition.
The method has been featured on early childhood socioemotional learning resources by the Walt Disney Company's Learning division, and it is now being used across various education, business, and other team contexts nationwide.
Where does the name "mondo" come from?
Mondo the Hippo
When Alexa joined her mom and master educator, Claudia Yunes, to co-found Yunes Educational Services, they needed a main character for all of their children's books and teacher resources. Claudia collected hippos throughout her entire life, so they knew the main character had to be a hippo. Why a hippo? When working with students, we share the metaphor of being like hippos instead of being like ducks. We explain to children that hippos do their very best with their stubby legs and large builds, and they manage to swim fast, run fast, and “be the best they can be.” We then explain that ducks seem to sit around all day despite having the natural ability to fly, run, swim, and do things much more easily. This cute metaphor had been in our classrooms for decades when we founded Yunes Educational Services, so we knew our learning materials would have to feature a hippo.
Why the name Mondo? Mondo means "world" in Italian, and the goal in all that we do together is to make the world a better place.
While this cute little guy only appears in the teaching materials we create for early childhood educators, his name is a reminder of the core goal of these neuroscience-based strategies for changing behavior and managing stress: to make the world a better place.